pimping climate change

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Introduction and overview

On 21 September 2006 Virgin Group Chairman and UK celebrity entrepreneur

Richard Branson pledged to divert all the profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin

Trains for the subsequent ten years (worth an estimated 1.6 billion) to ``fight global

warming'' (see BBC News 2006; The Guardian 2007). The announcement shepherded

by former US President Bill Clinton

was made in Washington DC and garneredconsiderable interest from the international media. It was followed by a 10 February

2007 commitment of 12.8 million (then worth about US $25 million) to the seques-

tration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for deep geological storage. These

initiatives arrived amid signs that public awareness about global warming and will-

ingness to act are growing in the Anglo-American world. Rising public consciousness

and engagement have been particularly evident in the UK of late. In this context, one

facet of the growing profile of climate change as a decidedly public policy challenge is

the proliferation of political and entertainment industry elites who have championed

action to abate and offset anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.Branson, through his relentless self-promotion and attention-seeking (and getting!)

ways, undoubtedly belongs in the pantheon of contemporary Anglo-American cultural

elites. At the same time he represents something else. Branson's fame is primarily

Pimping climate change: Richard Branson, global warming,

and the performance of green capitalism

Scott Prudham

Department of Geography and Centre for Environment, University of Toronto, Toronto,ON M5S 3G3, Canada; e-mail: [email protected] 22 March 2007; in revised form 24 July 2008; published online 6 April 2009

Environment and Planning A 2009, volume 41, pages 1594 ^ 1613

Abstract. On 21 September 2006 UK u ber-entrepreneur and Virgin Group Chairman Richard Bransonpledged approximately 1.6 billion, the equivalent of all the profits from Virgin Atlantic and VirginTrains for the next ten years, to fighting climate change. Since then, Branson has restated hiscommitment to action on global warming, including investment in technologies for sequesteringcarbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this paper, I critically examine and engage with Branson'sannouncements as a specific entree into a dialog about so-called `green capitalism'. I am particularlyinterested in the role of the entrepreneurial subject in environmental policy and environmental action.There are glaring problems associated with green capitalism as a mash-up of environmentalism withcapitalism. One of these is the tethering of environmentalism to a political economy whose mantra isgrowth for growth's sake, or, in Marx's terms, accumulation for accumulation's sake. This has been

discussed by some as the problem of capitalism's ecological metabolism or `metabolic rift'. Yet, whileaccumulation for accumulation's sake may well be anathema to progressive environmentalism andsustainability, I argue that this is not only an objective, quantitative problem but also one of thequalitative dimensions of produced nature and the cultural politics of environmentalism. Appreciationof this can be gleaned by reexamining Marx's discussion of the role of the bourgeois subject in therelentless drive to reproduce and expand capital accumulation via anarchic, entrepreneurial invest-ment. Green capitalist orthodoxy relies on this source of innovative dynamism, but in the processobscures or overlooks the fact that accumulation for accumulation's sake is by definition guided bythe anarchic and amoral search for profitable realization of surplus value. Moreover, in order forgreen capitalism to succeed, its legitimacy must be secured. I argue that this legitimacy derives in partfrom specific performances of green capitalism by entrepreneurial elites, also made evident by

Branson and his commitments to climate action. All of this raises questions about the political,cultural, and ecological character of green capitalism, issues brought to the fore by Branson's brandof climate activism.

doi:10.1068/a4071


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based on his status as the quintessential post-Thatcher entrepreneur. He is a `model'

post-Keynesian entrepreneurial subject in a neoliberalized economy of opportunity,

particularly but by no means only iconic in the UK. Branson is thus a rare exampleof the business elite with a large climate footprint who has embraced action to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions. But, in addition, Branson's announcements also suggest

a synthesis or fusion between celebrity entrepreneurialism, on the one hand, and

climate change policy, on the other. This fusion in the context of climate politics

and policy is a specific thrust in the wider movement toward so-called `green capital-

ism': a set of responses to environmental change and environmentalism that relies on

harnessing capital investment, individual choice, and entrepreneurial innovation to

the green cause. No environmental challenge is now more salient, and thus no item

on the green capitalism agenda is more important, than global warming. In the wordsof prominent green capitalism advocate and President of the Environmental Defense

Fund Fred Krupp, ``We've put Earth at the brink of climate calamity, thanks to rapid

industrialization and market forces. That's part one. The sequel is how we get out of

this fix. I believe it's those same forces, innovation and profit and nothing else that

can stop global warming'' (Griscom Little, 2008).

There is every possibility that Branson's championing of action on climate change

will deepen commitments to meaningful attempts to abate greenhouse gas emissions,

and also bolster efforts to redress the expected impacts of climate change. This is

important. Global warming and its expected impacts constitute a serious issue, withpotentially catastrophic implications for the poorest people of the world (Parks and

Roberts, 2006; Roberts, 2001). Nevertheless, this paper is a critique of Branson's

announcements and the notion that they are somehow a `good thing'. I seek to add

to an emerging critical literature on the role of cultural elites in the fight over climate

change (eg Boykoff and Goodman, 2008; Gajda and Kieffer, 2007). However, my

focus is specifically on the elite bourgeois subject as a subset of the phenomenon.

Drawing on Branson's example, I interrogate the would-be `green capitalist' in order to

elucidate some aspects of and challenges to this particular brand of elite-led action in

the climate policy arena, issues that, in turn, speak to the central but somewhatoverlooked role of the entrepreneurial subject in the political and cultural logic of

green capitalism more broadly.

The paper features two interrelated arguments. First, Branson's announcements

(particularly the first one) point to a central contradiction in the green capitalist

agenda. This agenda pivots in large measure on the problematic suggestion that more

sustainable futures can be secured via capitalist investment and entrepreneurial innova-

tion. Whatever truth there may be in particular cases, this obscures the relentless,

restless, and growth-dependent character of capitalism's distinct metabolism, an argu-

ment most closely associated with the work of Bellamy Foster (Clark and York, 2005;Foster, 2000), but which draws in turn on Karl Marx. The metabolism critique right-

fully identifies a tendency in capitalist political economies for aggregate throughput of

material and energy to grow, outstripping any efficiency gains (ie the so-called `Jevons

paradox'). But accumulation for accumulation's sake also entails dynamic confronta-

tion, transformation, and redefinition of material, social, and cultural conditions in

ways that confound coherent articulation of any notion of fixed `limits' (including

ecological ones) to continued expansion. This essentially qualitative problem originates

in the microeconomics of the entrepreneurial subject who is compelled to accumulate

on an expanded scale if only to reproduce himself or herself. What results is a systemiclogic of the production of new natures integrally connected to the production of

space and uneven development more generally (Smith, 2008 [1984]) by the anarchic,

restless drive to accumulate capital as an end in and of itself. Thus, I argue that,

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when thinking of capitalism's so-called `biospheric rift' (Clark and York, 2005), it is

crucial to attend not only to quantities of aggregate material and energy throughput,

but also to issues of quality.Secondly, focus on the elite entrepreneurial or bourgeois subject points to the need

for a politico-cultural perspective on green capitalism as a sort of `drama' which must

be performed. That is, the viability of green capitalism is not only an `objective'

question of whether or not entrepreneurial energy, unleashed by neoliberalized green

markets, can give rise to sustainable technoeconomic trajectories. Rather, it is also a

political agenda whose viability turns on whether or not capitalism and environmen-

talism are seen subjectively to be compatible. Seen in this way, green capitalism has

interwoven material ^ semiotic dimensions (Haraway, 1997), one central facet of which

is the `performance' of the entrepreneurial subject as environmental crusader. Perform-ances such as Branson's not only stage the political and cultural fusion of capitalism

and environmentalism as green capitalism; they also act to augment the economic

foundations of bourgeois power by making the entrepreneur a central figure in climate

policy, and, by extension, environmentalism.

In what follows, I elaborate on these arguments in succession. I then close by

considering explicitly the political dilemma posed by specifically entrepreneurial

elites as champions of action on climate change, and of environmentalism more

generally. If the legitimacy of green capitalism turns on the kinds of performances

offered by Branson in these announcements then it bears reminding ourselves thatBranson can lay little claim to political legitimacy. This may seem obvious, but it is

not unrelated to the issue of elites more generally embracing action on climate

change; however welcome in some respects this may be, some consideration needs to

be given to the degree to which the resulting fusions of disparate cultural and political

agendas not only redress the climate problem but also sustain and enhance elite (in this

case entrepreneurial) status.

Green capitalism, metabolism, the production of capitalist nature, and accumulation

for accumulation's sakeI use the term `green capitalism' to refer to a tightly woven mix of faith in nominally

free markets and market-based instruments, enclosures of various kinds, and capital

investment and entrepreneurial innovation, all aimed at redressing environmental

problems (however defined and measured). The actual term has been used by others

(eg Friedmann, 2005; Watts, 2002), but the substantive content of what I mean is

much more widely recognized and problematized by critical scholars. In the most

abstract rendering, green capitalism refers to the increasing incorporation and inter-

nalization of ecological conditions into the circuits of capital accumulation via the

production, commodification, and even real subsumption of nature (Boyd et al, 2001;Kloppenburg, 2004; O'Connor, 1998; Prudham, 2005; Smith, 1984). This is attended by

forms of calculation, expertise, and environmental governance. But it also includes the

manner in which environmental politics become semiotically and ideologically tethered

to the reproduction of the conditions of accumulation, via what Smith 2008 [1984])

theorizes as the proliferation of the abstract second (produced) nature of exchange

value (see also O'Connor, 1993).

As such, green capitalism comes in many forms and, like the more general neo-

liberal turn of which it is one facet, has complex intellectual and political origins.

Under the rubric of green capitalism, for instance, should be included a widespreadturn in recent decades to so-called market-based mechanisms such as tradeable pollu-

tion permits. This approach is now becoming central in climate policy, particularly but

not only in the EU (Bailey, 2007a; 2007b; Bailey and Rupp, 2005) in the form of both

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state-coordinated and voluntary offset markets in carbon dioxide emissions (Bumpus

and Liverman, 2008). The intellectual foundation of market-based mechanisms, partic-

ularly tradable emissions or cap-and-trade systems, in one sense relies simply on theargument that this is the most economically efficient (ie cheapest) way to achieve given

environmental quality objectives (for discussion see Ekins and Barker, 2001; Tietenberg,

1980). A closely related idea animates the neoclassical theory of the `backstop technol-

ogy'. When full costs are paid, the argument goes, informed entrepreneurs will adjust to

(accurate) price signals by diverting investment away from environmentally damaging

technologies and toward more green technoeconomic strategies (Pearce and Turner,

1990; for critique of price as a measure of scarcity, see Norgaard, 1990).

But deeper foundations lie in an underlying faith in private decision making: thus,

the conservation ^ privatization connection articulated famously by Hardin (1968), andbefore him (and more rigorously) by Gordon (1954). In turn, all of these draw on a

lineage of faith in `greed' (bolstered by strong, exclusive private property rights) as

socially desirable. For example, Malthus (1993 [1798]), in addition to his (in)famous

embrace of famine and disease as `natural' or what he called `preventive' checks on

population growth, also stated that:

` it appears, that a society constituted according to the most beautiful form that

imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its moving principle, instead of

self-love, and with every evil disposition in all its members corrected by reason

and not force, would, from the inevitable laws of nature, and not from anyoriginal depravity of man [sic], in a very short period degenerate into a society

constructed upon a plan not essentially different from that which prevails in every

known state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of proprietors,

and a class of labourers, and with self-love the main-spring of the great machine''

(Malthus, 1993 [1798], pages 64 ^ 65).

There is, of course, much more to be said about green capitalism, its origins, and a

proliferation of market fundamentalism in contemporary environmental policy making

(see eg Goldman, 2005; Heynen et al, 2007; Krueger and Gibbs, 2007; Liverman, 2004;

McAfee, 1999; Mansfield, 2004a; 2004b; 2007). But the point is that markets, more orless accurate prices, enclosures of various kinds, a faith in the choices of ostensibly

independent and rational individuals, and investment of capital by innovative entre-

preneurs constitute the ubiquitous tropes of green capitalism. A pithy but by no means

atypical endorsement of the green capitalist approach is encapsulated, for instance,

in the following Heritage Foundation energy policy statement:

` U.S. energy policy should be based on the creativity of free enterprise. Congress

and the Administration should rely on the private sector's research and develop-

ment capabilities to deliver traditional supplies and viable new energy sources

rather than mandates, regulations, subsidies, and directed research.''(1)

This kind of approach to environmental regulation has become emblematic of a

plethora of like-minded think tanks and lobby groups, particularly in the US. It is

consistent with a reinvigorated turn to the mix of utopian economic and political

doctrines of freedom that constitute the rhetorical and ideological core of neoliberal-

ism (Harvey, 2005), and very consistent with a more general shift in recent decades

from `managerialism to entrepreneurialism' (Harvey, 1989) in social regulation. Green

capitalism thus reflects and reinforces transformations of governance, and specifically

environmental governance, with so-called command-and-control approaches giving

way to mechanisms such as ` eco-taxes, `best practices' environmental management,green consumer activism, community-driven environmental regulation, and more

(1)http://www.heritage.org/about/lfa/energyandenvironment.cfm.



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collaborative models of environmental governance'' (Watts, 2002, page 1315). Markets,

privatization, commercialization, and outright commodification have become central

elements (as opposed to the objects) of environmental regulation, evident not only inthe prescriptions of neoliberal think tanks but also in those of a whole generation of

environmental NGOs and government policy makers (Bakker, 2005; Heynen et al,

2007; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004; Mansfield, 2007).

So, what does any of this have to do with Richard Branson? In some ways, every-

thing. Despite the fact that the venerable BBC described Branson's September 2006

announcement as one in which he was pledging US $3 billion to `fight global warming',

this is not quite right. Branson did spin it this way, but the announcement specifically

targeted ``schemes to develop new renewable energy technologies'', and to divert profits

from Virgin Airlines and Virgin Trains into a financial arm of the Branson empirecalled, appropriately enough, Virgin Fuels. Virgin Fuels, in turn, will use these funds

as part of its planned investments in the alternative energy sector, investments that

already include backing a California company called Cilion, making ethanol from

corn. This is very much consistent with the broader emergence of so-called `biofuels'

as an alternative to fossils, a strategy that is garnering considerable momentum thanks

to endorsements by the likes of Al Gore, and to widespread subsidies in the US and

elsewhere aimed at pulling farm crop cultivation into the circuits of biofuel produc-

tion (on US subsidies see Koplow, 2007). It is consistent with Branson's declared

hope that biofuels can displace fossil fuels burned in conventional air and train travelin the foreseeable future. This, too, is quintessentially green capitalism, a technical fix

for an ostensibly technical problem, propelled by an entrepreneur looking to sustain

profitability in the context of threats to existing markets.

But, if this is green capitalism, examining Branson's approach more closely points

to systematic problems with the green capitalist agenda. A supposed advantage of

biofuels is that they promise a less carbon-intensive fuel source for transportation

(and other energy-using activities) since they will drastically reduce net carbon emis-

sions to the atmosphere when burned. The obvious reason for this is that the fuels

come from green plants which, in turn, assimilate carbon dioxide from the atmospherein their growth. While fossil fuel combustion transfers carbon from deep geological

storage into the atmosphere in the form of oxides of carbon, and contributes to an

enhanced greenhouse effect, biofuels offer a lower carbon alternative and the possibil-

ity of a zero net carbon flux to the atmosphere, provided the plants take up as much or

more carbon dioxide when they grow as is released by the biofuels when they burn.

Yet, there are elements of this strategy for offsetting carbon emissions which are

not ideal. One is simply that the scheme obscures or deflects attention from growth in

the airline industry and in airline travel per se. Substituting fuels amidst continued

growth in the industry means any ecological implications associated with the new fuelcycle will be, all other things being equal, that much more pronounced. And, in the

case of biofuels, there are reasons to be concerned about the substitution of one set

of environmental problems for another as expansion in biofuels production offsets

current and growing demand for airline fuel. Only under highly restrictive and

unlikely conditions could the switch to renewable fuels actually be renewable in a

robust sense of the term. All of the energy generated from burning biofuels, including

efficiency and processing losses, would have to be offset by the production of energy

from photosynthesis in the feed crop. This includes all of the energy inputs in the

production process. It sounds feasible, intuitively doable, and eminently appealing,but life-cycle assessments of intensive crop production regimes, whether for agriculture

or for energy production, consistently point to large inputs of energy in the cultivation,

harvesting, and conversion stages, sometimes by many factors more than the energy

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yielded by the final product (Bayliss-Smith, 1982; Netting, 1986). These inputs include,

for instance, fuel used for machinery in cultivation and processing, chemical inputs

such as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, etc.Will all of these inputs, simultaneously, be converted to renewable sources along

with the fuel itself? It seems unlikely. For example, Pimentel and Patzek (2006) offer

some sobering numbers when it comes to one of the most commonly cited `solutions'

to the fossil fuel problem, the conversion of corn (either directly or from biomass

`waste') into ethanol. To start, all green plants in the United States take up in one

year through photosynthesis about the energy equivalent of half of current annual

energy consumption in the US. If the entire US corn crop were converted into ethanol,

it would offset a total of 6% of current US fossil fuel combustion, and that ignores the

fact that it takes 29% more energy to produce ethanol than is contained within it; forcellulose technologies (from high-intensity wood fibre plantations), that number is 50%

using current technologies. That energy input has to come from someplace, and it

currently comes primarily from fossil fuels. In fact, the thermodynamics of converting

plant biomass to liquid fuels is sobering even using the fastest growing crops such as

acacia and eucalyptus (Patzek and Pimentel, 2005). So a substitution to nominally

renewable fuels can disguise important nonrenewable elements of renewable fuel cycles.

Moreover, the discourse of converting so-called agricultural `waste' (eg the unused

plant material in corn production) into biofuels ignores the implications of this diver-

sion of nutrients out of ecosystems, which may subsidize short-term energy supplieswith long-term soil productivity (Patzek and Pimentel, 2005). In addition, there is a

suite of potentially negative repercussions of converting to biofuels on a large scale,

including the diversion of food crops into biofuel production, the appropriation of

human and nonhuman forest habitat to intensive and industrialized crop cultivation

regimes, and the production of particulate emissions from biofuel combustion itself.

These concerns are becoming increasingly evident, not least via a current international

food crisis whose origins, in substantial measure, lie in rising prices driven by com-

petition for food grains between the food system and the biofuels industry. And they

point to the need to think in terms of complex chains of causation that rework socio-natural relations across scales in the biofuel economy, connections that bring together

voracious energy demand (particularly in affluent countries), multinational capital,

states and international development institutions, local and regional dynamics of

deforestation, social marginalization and struggle, access to land, and food security

(Cooke, 2002; Dennis and Colfer, 2006; McMorrow and Talip, 2001; Wolford, 2004;

see also Monbiot, 2005).

I argue that these specific problems with the political ecology of biofuel substitu-

tion exemplify systematic challenges to the green capitalist agenda. Specifically, they

point to systematic ways in which biophysical nature is produced or metabolized in acapitalist political economy. These particularities include growth dependence, but also

a tendency to continuously transform the relations and conditions of production (includ-

ing, importantly, environmental conditions) propelled by the drive to accumulate capital

as an end in and of itself what Marx called `accumulation for accumulation's sake'.

At issue here, in part, is that capitalism is a restless and growth-dependent political

economy. And, despite the immediacy of current anxieties surrounding climate change

and a host of other environmental problems linked to relentless economic growth and

transformation, the question as to whether capitalism can or cannot continue to grow

ad infinitum is arguably as old as capitalism itself. It is one of the defining questionsof classical political economy taken up variously by the likes of Adam Smith, David

Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus, all of whom were generally pessimistic about long-

run raw material availability. By no means has this debate disappeared, and, in fact,



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it was reinvigorated by the emergence of an increasingly globalist environmentalism

in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the specific guise of a neo-Malthusian emphasis on the

population ^ environment nexus (see eg Ehrlich, 1968; Meadows and Club of Rome,1972).

The question of whether or not capitalism is or can be sustainable has also

animated debates within the Marxist tradition, with, it must be said, no clear con-

sensus (see eg Altvater, 1993; Benton, 1989; 1996; Leff, 1995; J O'Connor, 1998;

M O'Connor, 1994). A recent contribution to this line of thinking, picked up from

some of Marx's more obscure and scattered direct comments on the matter, come in

the guise of the notion of the metabolic rift. This idea is generating some considerable

popular and scholarly interest thanks primarily to the work of American sociologist

John Bellamy Foster (1999; 2000). But, as Foster clearly indicates, it comes from Marx,who was inspired, in turn, by reading 19th-century agronomy and soil chemistry

literature. This includes the work of German chemist Justus von Liebig, who criticized

intensive agronomic practices as forms of robbery. Liebig is thought to be the inspira-

tion for Marx's famous statement in volume 1 of Capital that ``all progress in capitalist

agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the

soil'' (Marx, 1977, page 638).

The idea of a more systemic metabolic rift between capitalist society and the

nonhuman world is based in part on Marx's general notion that the social relation to

nature in all societies is essentially metabolic, meaning that there is a process of mutualtransformation between human and nonhuman nature through the transfer of matter

and energy. As he wrote in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts: ``Nature is

man's [sic] inorganic body that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the human body.

Man lives from nature ie, nature is his body and he must maintain a continuing

dialogue with it if he is not to die.'' (2)

For Foster (1999), Marx's comments on social metabolism combined with his

critique of capitalist agriculture underpin an argument for a more systemic metabolic

rift specific to and constitutive of capitalism. Having first traced the lineage of the

metabolism notion as it was picked up by the likes of Kautsky and Bukharin (but alsodropped, notably in the Soviet tradition), in his subsequent book Foster (2000) extends

the critique of capitalist agriculture into a more generalized critique of capitalist

nature. In their elaboration, Clark and York (2005, page 399) put it as follows:

` Capitalism is unable to maintain the conditions necessary for the recycling of

nutrients. In this capitalism creates a rift in our social metabolism with nature.

In fact, the development of capitalism continues to intensify the rift in agriculture

and creates rifts in other realms of the society ^ nature relationship, such as the

introduction of artificial fertilizers.''

In their words, drawing on Foster with a specific eye to theorizing global warming, the:` `metabolic rift' refers to an ecological rupture in the metabolism of a system. The

natural processes and cycles (such as the soil nutrient cycle) are interrupted.

The division between town and country is a particular geographical manifestation

of the metabolic rift, in regards to the soil nutrient cycle. But the essence of a

metabolic rift is the rupture or interruption of a natural system'' (page 399).

Considerable focus in Foster's work (and in that of Clark and York) is directed at

the debate over so-called `dematerialization' that is, the degree to which economic

growth and capitalism more generally can be `decoupled' from energy and material

throughput to a sufficient degree to make sustainable capitalism possible. This debatehas been central to the emergence of environmental sociology and the so-called

(2) Available online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm.

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`treadmill of production' theory. Scholars led by Schnaiberg (1980; Schnaiberg and

Gould, 1994) have challenged sanguine predictions, typically from economists and eco-

logical modernization advocates, documenting that growth effects tend to swampefficiency effects with little evidence of any absolute decline in energy and material

requirements even in the most affluent national economies. Foster draws on the work

of 19th-century British political economist William Stanley Jevons in calling this an

example of the Jevons `paradox' (ie that increasing efficiencies can in some ways only

encourage increasing demand, but tend not to lead to decreasing amounts of through-

put). The explanation for this apparent paradox, as Foster as well as Clark and York

argue, is the expanding scale of capitalism, founded, in turn, on the phenomenon of

growth or accumulation as ends in and of themselves (accumulation for accumulation's

sake) in the context of a prevailing metabolic rift.The metabolic rift as a critique of green capitalism seems highly germane to the

case in hand since, as noted, Branson's announcements at best promise less carbon-

intensive development trajectories. Yet, to the extent that insight is to be drawn from

broadly Marxian perspectives on environmental change in a capitalist political econ-

omy, the record is mixed. On the one hand, there are those who see capitalism as `the

problem' a la Foster or O'Connor and his second (ecological) contradiction argument

(1988; 1998), but, on the other, there are those of a more Promethean disposition (for

discussion see Foster, 1999; Goldman and Schurman, 2000). On this, Harvey notes

pointedly that `Ìt has ... proven hard to wean Marxism from a rather hubristic viewof the domination of nature thesis''; yet, he continues, `ìn those rare instances when

Marxists have taken the material biological and physical conditions of existence

as foundational to their materialism, they have either lapsed into some form

of environmental determinism ... or into a damaging materialist pessimism'' (1996,

page 193).

Geographers whose cross is also to bear the legacy of environmental determinism

and the discipline's colonial history of a generally Marxist uneven development bent

have tended to downplay strict and static notions of ecological `limits' in favor of the

dynamic production of new conditions, the constant revolutionizing of productionrelations and conditions (Buck, 2007; Harvey, 1974; 1996), and, in this context, the

material and semiotic production of what is experienced as `nature' itself (Smith, 2008

[1984]).(3) It bears noting here too (2008 [1984) that much early political ecology

(influenced by and influential on geographical debates) eschewed simple-minded

neo-Malthusianism and the so-called `pressure of population on resources' hypothesis,

emphasizing instead unjust rights of resource access and control; contested meanings

and understandings; and the dynamics of commercialization and commodification

as key factors propelling environmental degradation (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987;

Carney, 1993; Robbins, 2004; Turner, 1993; Watts, 1983). Limits, per se, were simplyno longer the question. As for nature itself, Smith (1996) summed it up rather nicely by

noting that `nature' as it is conventionally understood and talked about is not a very

relational and, therefore, Marxist category at all.

However, redefining the problem does not make the issue of ècological limits' to

capitalism go away entirely. I strongly suspect (in fact, I know) that many critical

geographers simply cringe and look away when they see the phrase ècological limits',

and many, I suspect, will have no truck with the notion of a systemic capitalist

metabolic rift more generally. Maybe they are right. Yet, in the context of various calls

to attend to the material action or àgency' of nonhuman beings and processes in ourgeographical work (for syntheses see Bakker and Bridge, 2006; Braun, 2005), and as

(3) This passage is also cited in Clark and York (2005, page 398).



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the distinct categories of nature and culture become dissolved in favour of hybrids,

assemblages, and socionatures (see eg Castree, 2003; Gandy, 2002; Kaika, 2005;

Latour, 1993; Swyngedouw, 1999; Whatmore, 2002), Harvey's challenge in JusticeNature and the Geography of Difference remains noteworthy:

` What I am proposing is a way of depicting the fundamental physical and bio-

logical conditions and processes that work through all social, cultural, and

economic projects to create a tangible historical geography and to do it in such

a way as to not render those physical and biological elements as a banal and

passive background to human historical geography'' (1996, page 192).

There is a genuine dilemma here: what are we to make of this nonhuman matter

which constitutes our geographies? Harvey's observation remains: on one side is the

specter of a rigid, dualistic, and deterministic perspective on the nature ^ society ornature ^ culture nexus. On the other, however, is potential complicity with laissez-faire

neoclassical optimism, and thus with the green capitalism school itself. One direction

to go in emphasizing dynamism, change, and the relentless production of new natures,

of course, is to abandon engagement with ecological conditions per se as a subset of

material conditions. But I think this is not necessary or wise, particularly for geogra-

phers. The danger is not one of bad theory but of not taking seriously enough the

material conditions of immiseration that characterize the lives of literally millions

(if not billions) of people in the contemporary world, and thus the socioecological

aspects of uneven development.A way forward is to emphasize that the problem is not only a quantitative one, but

also a qualitative one. Indeed, as Neil Smith noted in Uneven Development (2008 [1984],

page 87): ``[C]apital, and the bourgeois society which nurtures it, usher in not just a

quantitative but also a qualitative change in the relation with nature.'' That is, the

metabolic rift originates not only from increasing total amounts of material and energy

throughput (as important as these flows may be), but also from the relentless and

chaotic transformation of relations and conditions of production (including ecological

conditions) in geographically specific ways.

In transforming and redefining material conditions and `limits', capitalism alsotransforms, redefines, and produces new `socioecological' temporal and spatial scales

(Robbins and Fraser, 2003; Sayre, 2005). All that is solid may well melt into air. What

an interesting phrase in the context of the current discussion! Need we then consider

the complex constituents of newly produced air into which that which was previously

solid has now melted? How does it change the valence of this celebrated phrase if we

include, for instance, a proliferation of persistent organic pollutants volatized and

dispersed through the atmosphere, condensed disproportionately in colder climes,

and bioaccumulated in arctic and Antarctic food webs, to say nothing of the accumu-

lation of greenhouse gases as driving forces in the changing composition of theatmosphere? In the case at hand, a whole suite of political ecological relations is

caught up in and reworked in the emerging economy and geography of biofuels and

carbon offsets.

Returning again to the pages of Uneven Development, Smith (page 88) goes on to

note in a prescient reference to the implications of climate change that ``the industrial

production of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere have had very

uncontrolled climatic effects ... [t]he most complete and elaborate of human produc-

tions, the capitalist system, is at the same time the most anarchic ... . The production

process is quite deliberate, but its immediate goal, profit, is reckoned in terms ofexchange-value, not use-value'' (emphasis added). Critically, where green capitalism is

concerned, this must include an account of the role of the entrepreneurial, bourgeois

subject propelling accumulation on an expanded scale. For Marx, one of the signature

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features of capitalism is the central figure presented by the capitalist, driven to expand

the scale and scope of accumulation as an end in and of itself. Marx offers the

following striking characterization of the phenomenon of accumulation for accumu-lation's sake, and its embodiment in the very identity of the archetypal capitalist (who,

it should be noted, Marx unfortunately makes uniquely male):

` in so far as he is capital personified, his motivating force is not the acquisition and

enjoyment of use-values, but the acquisition and augmentation of exchange-values.

He is fanatically intent on the valorization of value; consequently he ruthlessly

forces the human race to produce for production's sake. In this way he spurs on

the development of society's productive forces, and the material conditions of

production which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a

society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the rulingprinciple. Only as a personification of capital is the capitalist respectable. As such,

he shares with the miser an absolute drive toward self-enrichment. But what

appears in the miser as the mania of an individual is in the capitalist the effect of

a social mechanism in which he is merely a cog. Moreover, the development

of capitalist production makes it necessary constantly to increase the amount of

the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition subordinates

every individual capitalist to the immanent laws of capitalist production, as exter-

nal coercive laws. It compels him to keep extending his capital, so as to preserve it,

but extend by means ofprogressive accumulation'' (1977, page 729, emphasis added).There is a lot to digest in this quote. For this discussion, I note four elements of the

passage. First, there is certainly at least a hint of the Prometheanism of Marx, his

sense that capitalism unleashes productive powers that will eventually lead to a `higher

form of society'. Second, however, the bourgeois subject propels the production of new

material conditions, among them new socionatures produced in, through, and even in

some cases for commodity production, such as genetically modified crops in agricul-

ture. This dynamic underpins the production of first and second nature, as crucially

redefined by Smith (2008 [1984]), through material transformation but also, more

abstractly, through the proliferation of nature as exchange value (second nature). Third,Marx observes that, while the bourgeois subject is defined by almost fanatically

eschewing self-gratification in use-values, this is somewhat of an imposed compulsion,

what Marx calls a `social mechanism'. As is made clear elsewhere in Capital (1977), this

compulsion originates in the need to expand the scale of production merely in order

to maintain a constant volume (not rate) of profit for any given individual capitalist;

in short, the capitalist must run to stay in place (see also Harvey, 1982).

There is, of course, much to be said on these topics. But, for the purposes of this

discussion, note finally that Marx makes the suggestive observation here that main-

taining a nondeclining volume of profit (again, based on an expanding scale ofproduction) as capital personified is the only manner in which the bourgeois subject

is validated or made respectable, albeit in relation to a largely presumed wider social

and cultural field. In short, this is the capitalist's identity, compelled to expand even

if only to stay in place economically, but also compelled by a politics of cultural

recognition in a capitalist society that valorizes his or her social role only through the

`valorization of value'. But now this phrase must be understood in a double sense

as both the expansion of value through exploitation of commodified labor power in

production, and cultural value or worth attributed to the capitalist according to his or

her ability to oversee this exploitation.If correct, this portrait of the bourgeois entrepreneurial subject presents a sobering

problem for green capitalism. If capitalism produces all manner of potentially pro-

gressive and liberating technologies and conditions of production (as seems to be



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the case), it also produces these according to a logic driven not by meeting those needs

per se, but by the anarchic dynamics of accumulation for accumulation's sake, in turn

driven by a nihilistic bourgeois subject whose claim to fame is accumulation in and ofitself, and, moreover, whose ability to merely reproduce himself or herself is predicated

on accumulation on an ever expanding scale. While a market-centered discourse of

environmentalism fixates on the most efficient ways to meet given environmental

targets, it ignores the systemic production of new environmental problems (new

natures) for which there may be no social regulation and no targets, and which leaves

unchallenged a political economy whose mantra is growth as an end in itself.

If growth may be required to lift millions if not billions out of grinding poverty,

growth in a capitalist economy is fuelled not by meeting human needs per se, but by

accumulation for accumulation's sake, and, with it, not just expansion, but anarchictransformation, of social relations, of technology, and of biophysical nature. This

systematically violates any robust version of the precautionary principle, interpreted

generally as `do no harm', since it places society in a position of reacting ex ante to

the changing character of produced nature. To be clear, this is not to say that all

forms of socionatural change produced through accumulation for accumulation's

sake are necessarily destructive or undesirable. Rather, it is to say that the produc-

tion of socionature, under green capitalism, is subordinated to the will of the

entrepreneur whose ethos is accumulation as an end in itself. Historical examples

of the phenomenon may include numerous beneficial technologies, but they alsoinclude the development of a range of new chemicals for applications in agriculture,

industrial processes, and consumer goods, not least in the form of synthetic organics

and hybrid organic/inorganic chemicals such as polychlorinated and polybromi-

nated biphenyls (Colborn et al, 1996). Rachel Carson (1994) made these the focus

of her life's work. Polychlorinated biphenyls, first manufactured commercially by

one of the parent companies of what became Monsanto, are perhaps the poster child

of the phenomenon, a boon across a range of industrial and commercial applications,

but also at the heart of an almost unparalleled toxic legacy whose implications

continue to unfold. Moreover, and this is the main point I am trying to emphasizehere, these and other chemicals are the direct products of innovative capital striving

to make use of its formerly wasted by-products in the absence of knowledge about or

regulation of the effects of introducing new substances into commodity circulation,

food chains, and the environment more generally. If this is a seldom celebrated form

of `industrial ecology', it is also quintessentially green capitalism. I am generally in

agreement with and informed by O'Connor (1998) on capitalism's second, ecological,

contradiction here except that I am emphasizing not only the underproduction of

the (ecological) conditions of reproduction, but also the systemic production of new

ecological conditions that may be (and, indeed, have been) highly destructive tohuman and nonhuman life. To advocate the desirability of such outcomes or a faith

in the social foundations of their genesis, as green capitalism requires, seems rather

perverse indeed.

The Branson case actually epitomizes and encapsulates this rather well. Here,

a private entrepreneur proposes to invest money from companies he controls into

new, private, profit-seeking ventures which ostensibly redress an existing set of envi-

ronmental dilemmas (ie climate-change-inducing effects of fossil fuel combustion) by

introducing a new set of fuels for profit-driven transportation services and an attendant

set of new environmental problems, many as yet unspecified or not well known. Hardlyan example of the harnessing of capital to the green cause, Branson's announcement

from this perspective exemplifies many of the reasons to be concerned with the very

possibility of or limits to a `green capitalism'.

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Green capitalism as performance

Green capitalism relies on the role of the entrepreneurial bourgeois subject as a

price-guided innovator propelling more environmentally friendly technoeconomicdevelopment. But the success of green capitalism and the central role of the entrepre-

neur rests on more than the òbjective' (quantitative and qualitative) characteristics

of resulting produced natures. Rather, green capitalism must also be accepted as

legitimate. In order for this to happen, the entrepreneur must be seen in political

and cultural terms to be an architect of, rather than an obstacle to, a greener future.

On the one hand, this wider social sanction is consistent with the existing status of

entrepreneurs as elites through the cultural worth and politics of recognition ascribed

to accumulation for its own sake, as indicated by Marx in the extended quote above.

But, on the other hand, it requires both extension and qualification of the scope of theentrepreneur's expertise into matters pertaining to environmental change. Specifically,

accumulation as an end in itself is no longer (if it ever really was) adequate; rather, the

viability of investment schemes, and with them the legitimacy of the green entrepre-

neur, turns on the realization of value in a market, which requires some form of social

sanction (formal or otherwise) of the commodities produced by green capitalists. How

a politics of worth articulates with commodities in the circulation and realization of

value is a complex matter indeed (see eg Henderson, 2004; Sayer, 2003). But, for green

capitalism to `work', environmentalism and capitalism must be understood not as

antagonisms but, rather, as a combatable fusion embodied in technoeconomictrajectories, as well as in the figure of the bourgeois subject himself or herself.

In some ways, this curious combination is the most remarkable feature of green

capitalism as a cultural logic. There are parallels here between green capitalism and

aspects of what have come to be called `neoliberalism'. I have contributed previously to

arguments that the reworking of long-standing political and economic variants of

liberalism in relation to socionatural relations, the politics of environmental change,

and environmentalism is constitutive of what we have come to understand as neo-

liberalism (Heynen et al, 2007; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). But therein lies

something of the problem. Both analytically and politically, we must attend to thespecific ways in which what we understand to be the `core' of neoliberalism comes to

articulate with such disparate projects and outcomes, and how it is that political

subjectivities are reworked in ways that undermine any sense that neoliberalism is

simply something that `they' are doing to ùs' (Larner, 2003). The alternative is to

treat these combinations and permutations as self-evident manifestations of an all-

encompassing neoliberalism without ever bothering to even seek explanation for how

ìt' happened. As Larner (2000) drawing on Hall (1988) correctly observed, this is

exactly a problem of hegemony, and thus of exploring how what would seem in some

ways odd or counterintuitive comes (eventually) to seem normal and even commonsense. This requires engaging in some understanding of the politics of legitimacy,

to see how it is that particular discursive formations, institutional arrangements, social

movements, actors, and material practices come to constitute the terrain of consent.

Thinking along similar lines, Brown examines the relationship between neoliber-

alism and neoconservatism, (2006, page 692) and asks how it is that neoliberal

capitalism as ` a rationality that is expressly amoral at the level of both ends and

means'' can be made to articulate and combine with one ` that is expressly moral

and regulatory'' (ie neoconservatism). The same question pertains to green capitalism.

How is it that the entrepreneurial subject, the capitalist, comes to have the foundationof his or her elite status extended beyond the scope of accumulation as an inherent

good, so that expanded rounds of capital accumulation and social decision making

led in significant measure by the entrepreneur comes to constitute a pivotal part of the



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solution in meeting the challenges of environmental change and environmentalism?

This is a political problem for the would-be green capitalist such as Branson; it is

also a question for critics of green capitalism to grapple with, more so perhaps thanhas been the case to date. Obviously, this is a complex question. Yet, as in Brown's

analysis, it points to the need to understand the reworking of political rationalities in

relation to state and society, in this context focusing on how a cultural politics of the

green entrepreneurial subject comes to have coherence. And I argue that part of

the answer lies in examining the ways in which `performances' help to embody

and thereby actively construct a fusion of ostensibly disparate political and cultural

agendas. In this framing, Branson's announcements and actions do `work' through the

performance of green capitalism.

Here, I draw on notions of subjectivity and identity emphasizing the performancesof individual subjects through which powerful norms of social behavior are reproduced

and embodied. This notion draws primarily on the work of Butler (1990), whose

concern has been to explain the regulation and propagation of prevailing norms of

cultural identity and behavior in realms such as sexuality, class, and race. According to

Butler, the reproduction of such norms is secured in part through their being enacted

and embodied by discrete performances of subjects. Crucially, such performances not

only cite and reproduce prevailing norms, but at the same time offer the potential to

creatively modify and subvert norms through variations in the specific manner in

which they are enacted and in the particular sociospatial and temporal contexts fordiscrete performances. As Nash notes, ``For Butler the concept of performativity is an

attempt to find a more embodied way of rethinking the relationships between deter-

mining social structures and personal agency. Rather than either essentialist genders

located in bodily difference or a kind of free-floating, fluid choice of gender identity,

Butler suggests that women and men learn to perform the sedimented forms of

gendered social practices that become so routinized as to appear natural'' (2000,

pages 654 ^ 655). These norms can, indeed, become so powerful that they become

reified as essential material forms independent of their cultural productions. As this

happens, identities and subjectivities come to be viewed as pure, stable abstractionsrather than embodied performances constituted in part by specific material practices

which sustain their coherence (for review and critique see McDowell, 1999; McDowell

and Court, 1994; Pratt, 2004). Yet, for Butler, this coherence is always unstable, on the

one hand making necessary iterative performances, and on the other hand rendering

norms available for subversion (intentional or otherwise), transformation, and critical

interrogation.

As Nash goes on to note, while Butler has been concerned, in particular, with

norms of gender and (hetero)sexuality, the notion of performance may be used pro-

ductively to examine all manner of normalized, regulated, but also embodied anditerative subjectivities. McDowell and Court (1994) focus, for example, on gendered

norms in the workplace performances of men and women in the world of banking and

finance. Similarly, and more germane to the notion of Branson's announcements as

performances of green capitalism, Thrift (2001) has discussed the performative dimen-

sions of a supposedly new economy whose stability relies on its narrative repetition as

well as on its embodied citation by managerial classes of capital. These performances

help make self-evident what is meant by the phrase `new economy', and what behav-

ioral norms are consistent with it. In a separate work (Thrift, 2000), he articulates a

view of how speed, agility, rapid adaptation, and other hallmark features of thepermanent state of emergency in which contemporary capitalist firms exist are per-

formed not only by managers in such firms, but also within the broader spatial spheres

in which they perform.

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I find this idea of norms performed iteratively through embodied social practice

productive (in more ways than one) in thinking about and coming to critical terms

with Branson as a would-be green entrepreneurial activist. Branson occupies a singularpolitical and cultural niche as an almost self-appointed archetype of the post-Thatcherite

capitalist, independent, entrepreneurial, mercurial, innovative, and most definitely a

celebrity. To whatever degree Branson wilfully seeks to convey and affect these mean-

ings, there can be little doubt of his association with them. His emergence as a

successful if not iconic entrepreneur originated in his sales of recorded music at

discount prices during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the name of Virgin, leading

to his eventual founding of Virgin Records. Branson diversified into the transportation

sector in 1984 with the launch of Virgin Atlantic Airways, seeking to compete with the

more established (and stodgy) British Airways. This was followed in 1997 by the launchof Virgin Trains, Branson's attempt to capitalize on the dismantling and privatization of

British Rail. He has consistently sought to draw attention to himself and his companies

with splashy business launches, highly personalized feuds with competitors (notably

British Airways), and heavily publicized long-distance adventures by boat and balloon.

These latter seemingly bear little direct relation to his businesses beyond free publicity

for Virgin; yet, they speak volumes about Branson's brand of entrepreneurial perfor-

mance as heroic, splashy, highly public, mercurial, and (in significant ways) even

macho fusions of adventure and business. Branson's public persona is one of dashing,

daring ambition and a wilful courtship with controversy, masculinized and often(hetero)sexualized in over-the-top ways. Metaphorically, Branson's escapades, includ-

ing, for instance, his risky adventures aboard boats and balloons, seem self-consciously

intended to draw attention to and underwrite the need for acumen, panache, and a

spirit of conquest in business (ad)ventures embodied in the heroic male entrepreneurial

subject.

And his attention-seeking ways have worked. Courted by the British Conservatives

and Third Way Labour alike, Branson was actually knighted in 1999 for `service to

entrepreneurship' (BBC News 2004). In this context, and particularly in post-Thatcher-

era Britain, Branson has come to embody the ideal of the British, but increasinglytransnational, neoliberal capitalist subject. He is the singular icon of the new British

business class, reinvigorated, lean, able to compete not only with Britain's older

generation of corporatist (both business and state) establishment, but, equally, with

the new, ostensibly less staid international capitalist class. He is, in this context,

a national (and nationalist) figure, named by BBC news readers as Britain's top

entrepreneur in 2003 by a whopping 57% of 15 000 voters in an online poll (the

second-highest vote getter garnered 17% support). And, yet, he is also a transnational

celebrity entrepreneur, made evident in part by his choice of Washington DC for the

September 2006 announcement and by his choice of accompaniment in Bill Clinton.Some might argue that Branson's singular, mercurial persona is inconsistent with

the focus in the literature on everyday, even mundane performances of gender, class,

and racial norms (indeed, this point has been raised in response to multiple presen-

tations of this paper before academic audiences). Yet, despite Branson's apparent

singularity, I would argue he cites and performs an already-existing, virulent, muscular

neoliberal, masculinist subjectivity reworked to fit the green capitalist agenda. The

highly stylized dimensions of Branson's performed persona constitute one part of his

`symbolic capital' by definition expressed in relation to existing discursive norms and

expectations (Bourdieu, 1984). As such, Branson's status and `distinction' were alwaysalready more than what could be captured by the strictly financial foundations of his

fame. It is important to remember here that, for Butler, performance points to the

need for prevailing discursive norms to be embodied in actions, gestures, and the like



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through everyday repetitions that, via their very repetition in specific circumstances by

particular bodies, become open to subversion in unpredictable and sometimes creative

ways. It is through performance that not only structure but also agency come together,in bodies always in a state of being produced (Wright, 2006). Such productions not

only are themselves effects, but also have effects. Branson, in this context, both signi-

fies the hybridization of environmentalism and capitalism, and is a vector of this

hybridization. I see it as entirely consistent then to argue that Branson performs green

capitalism in part through creatively fusing environmentalism and entrepreneurialism.

To emphasize, this is not to say that Branson creates or single-handedly authors

the notion of green capitalism, nor that he alone performs the green entrepreneur;

he clearly does not. Branson's persona, carefully cultivated though it may be, exists in

relation to already existing, taken-for-granted notions of the entrepreneur as culturalelite in a more-than capitalist society. Moreover, if Branson is in some ways the

paradigmatic example of the heroic (masculine?) neoliberal subject, individually freed

from the shackles of excessive government to choose his path, this is not the same as

saying he is the sole source of this powerful narrative of neoliberal political rationality

(Guthman and DuPuis, 2006). Similarly, he builds on, as much as authors, an estab-

lished narrative foundation for green capitalism. Yet, it equally flies in the face of his

obvious fame to argue that Branson is merely mundane. In this sense, Branson pimps

climate' by doing some of the cultural work necessary to fuse capitalism and envi-

ronmentalism. I do not use the term `pimp' lightly here. Rather, I chose it to conveyexactly the sense of sensationalism and self-promotion, but also exploitation, and, in

the spirit of Butler's gendered theorization of performance, a virile form of masculine

display.

Conclusion

Obviously, this paper is only somewhat about Richard Branson. I am no fan to be sure,

but that does not matter. What I have tried to do is to use Branson's splashy announce-

ments in September of 2006, and in February 2007, along with related press (print and

electronic media) coverage in order to think through ecological contradictions and thecultural politics of green capitalism. I have argued that the metabolism school offers a

powerful critique of green capitalism's prescriptions by taking some of the stuffing out

of the notion that capitalism can, in fact, be green. But I have also argued that a

theory of the metabolism of capitalist nature must come to terms with the qualitative

and cultural politics of socionatures produced via the restless dynamism of capital

accumulation pursued as an end in itself. This requires understanding something of

what Marx meant by accumulation for accumulation's sake, and what that might mean

for contemporary environmental change and environmental politics. However, I have

also argued that attending to the cultural politics of green capitalism should includesome assessment of the cultural work required to fuse these potentially disparate

political rationalities, drawing attention to the potential importance of Branson's

announcements as performances. Such performances, admittedly some higher profile

than others, are required in order to secure the legitimacy of green capitalism as a

political project. It follows that our theories of green capitalism, capitalist nature,

ecological contradictions of capitalism, the various facets of a distinctly capitalist

metabolism, and the like should not fail to appraise the significance of performances

as cultural and political work which is necessary for environmentalism and capitalism

to be successfully fused. The need for critical appraisals of green capitalist prescrip-tions has become all the more important in the intervening period since Branson's

announcements, given emerging critiques of the political ecology of biofuels, and

increasing recognition that consumerism, an economy of greed, and profound social

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inequality across multiple scales are inextricably bound up in the problems of climate

change and global warming.

Some people will react to this paper (and, indeed, already have!) by arguing thatit is unrealistic, and that the world is a better place since Richard Branson pledged

action on climate change. I am not immune to this critique. I was visiting the UK

during an academic sabbatical at the time of Branson's first announcement, and one

thing that struck me is that it would be difficult to imagine a prominent North

American entrepreneur making a similar commitment to climate change in part

because the level of consciousness raising and awareness about climate change as an

issue in the lives of everyday people in the UK seems (at least to me, and as of this

writing) much higher. There may, in fact, be an argument to be made here that

Branson represents something of a rearguard action born of panic in the face ofimpending social regulation of the airline industry, and, moreover, that it is actually

capitalism that is being forced to adapt to environmentalism, not the other way

around. Clearly, green capitalism makes for hybrid politics, and I do not wish to

suggest otherwise.

Still, amidst a proliferation of celebrity environmentalists (many rich though not all

entrepreneurs) as well as some high-profile business elites turned philanthropists in

recent years (eg Bill Gates, Warren Buffett), there is a need to consider the character of

the environmental and social changes that can and cannot be championed by these

people. Contacted to comment again on the second of Branson's announcements(the prize for sequestering carbon) Friends of the Earth spokesperson Tony Jupiter

reminded observers of this:

` many of the ways of tackling climate change, such as energy efficiency and renew-

ables, already exist, and it is essential that these are implemented as soon

as possible. We cannot afford to wait for futuristic solutions which may never

materialise. Sir Richard must also look at his business activities and the contribu-

tion they make to climate change. The world will find it very difficult to tackle

climate change if air travel continues to expand and space tourism is developed''

(The Guardian 2007).Clearly, then, I cannot pretend to be the only person who has issues with Sir

Richard's interventions on climate change, and if I have made it seem the case that

has also not been my intention. Rather, my intention has been to work through some

of what it means for celebrity entrepreneurs to attach themselves to environmental-

ism, and, by extension, some of what is at stake in the notion of a green capitalism.

This is in the spirit of refusing to content ourselves with asking whether or not we are

environmentalists, but asking instead what kind of environmentalism procedural and

substantive we wish to practice.

Acknowledgements. This paper was initiated while I was a visiting scholar in the EnvironmentalChange Institute at the University of Oxford. I would like to acknowledge the stimulating commu-nity of scholars and students there who helped inspire me to write this paper, and who helped methink it through. Special thanks to Diana Liverman, Emily Boyd, Emma Tompkins, Max Boykoff,Timmons Roberts, Maria Carmen Lemos, Dan Buck, and the participants in the James Martinclimate seminar at Oxford in 2006 ^ 07. Thanks also to Alana Boland, Matt Farish, JamesMcCarthy, Katharine Rankin, Jamie Peck, Rachel Silvey, Neil Smith, and three anonymousreferees for feedback on an earlier draft. I also benefited from feedback on the paper from anaudience at the Ohio State University Department of Geography colloquium, particularly MattColeman, Kevin Cox, Becky Mansfield, and Joel Wainwright. All remaining ambiguities and errorsare mine.



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